Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (652 page)

How Arabella had obtained money did not appear, but she ordered a liqueur each, and paid for them. When they had drunk these Arabella suggested another; and Jude had the pleasure of being, as it were, personally conducted through the varieties of spirituous delectation by one who knew the landmarks well. Arabella kept very considerably in the rear of Jude; but though she only sipped where he drank, she took as much as she could safely take without losing her head — which was not a little, as the crimson upon her countenance showed.

Her tone towards him to-night was uniformly soothing and cajoling; and whenever he said “I don’t care what happens to me,” a thing he did continually, she replied, “But I do very much!” The closing hour came, and they were compelled to turn out; whereupon Arabella put her arm round his waist, and guided his unsteady footsteps.

When they were in the streets she said: “I don’t know what our landlord will say to my bringing you home in this state. I expect we are fastened out, so that he’ll have to come down and let us in.”

“I don’t know — I don’t know.”

“That’s the worst of not having a home of your own. I tell you, Jude, what we had best do. Come round to my father’s — I made it up with him a bit to-day. I can let you in, and nobody will see you at all; and by to-morrow morning you’ll be all right.”

“Anything — anywhere,” replied Jude. “What the devil does it matter to me?”

They went along together, like any other fuddling couple, her arm still round his waist, and his, at last, round hers; though with no amatory intent; but merely because he was weary, unstable, and in need of support.

“This — is th’ Martyrs’ — burning-place,” he stammered as they dragged across a broad street. “I remember — in old Fuller’s
Holy State
— and I am reminded of it — by our passing by here — old Fuller in his
Holy State
says, that at the burning of Ridley, Doctor Smith — preached sermon, and took as his text
‘Though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.’
— Often think of it as I pass here. Ridley was a — ”

“Yes. Exactly. Very thoughtful of you, deary, even though it hasn’t much to do with our present business.”

“Why, yes it has! I’m giving my body to be burned! But — ah you don’t understand! — it wants Sue to understand such things! And I was her seducer — poor little girl! And she’s gone — and I don’t care about myself! Do what you like with me! … And yet she did it for conscience’ sake, poor little Sue!”

“Hang her! — I mean, I think she was right,” hiccuped Arabella. “I’ve my feelings too, like her; and I feel I belong to you in Heaven’s eye, and to nobody else, till death us do part! It is — hic — never too late — hic to mend!”

They had reached her father’s house, and she softly unfastened the door, groping about for a light within.

The circumstances were not altogether unlike those of their entry into the cottage at Cresscombe, such a long time before. Nor were perhaps Arabella’s motives. But Jude did not think of that, though she did.

“I can’t find the matches, dear,” she said when she had fastened up the door. “But never mind — this way. As quiet as you can, please.”

“It is as dark as pitch,” said Jude.

“Give me your hand, and I’ll lead you. That’s it. Just sit down here, and I’ll pull off your boots. I don’t want to wake him.”

“Who?”

“Father. He’d make a row, perhaps.”

She pulled off his boots. “Now,” she whispered, “take hold of me — never mind your weight. Now — first stair, second stair — ”

“But — are we out in our old house by Marygreen?” asked the stupefied Jude. “I haven’t been inside it for years till now! Hey? And where are my books? That’s what I want to know?”

“We are at my house, dear, where there’s nobody to spy out how ill you are. Now — third stair, fourth stair — that’s it. Now we shall get on.”

CHAPTER VII

Arabella was preparing breakfast in the downstairs back room of this small, recently hired tenement of her father’s. She put her head into the little pork-shop in front, and told Mr. Donn it was ready. Donn, endeavouring to look like a master pork-butcher, in a greasy blue blouse, and with a strap round his waist from which a steel dangled, came in promptly.

“You must mind the shop this morning,” he said casually. “I’ve to go and get some inwards and half a pig from Lumsdon, and to call elsewhere. If you live here you must put your shoulder to the wheel, at least till I get the business started!”

“Well, for to-day I can’t say.” She looked deedily into his face. “I’ve got a prize upstairs.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“A husband — almost.”

“No!”

“Yes. It’s Jude. He’s come back to me.”

“Your old original one? Well, I’m damned!”

“Well, I always did like him, that I will say.”

“But how does he come to be up there?” said Donn, humour-struck, and nodding to the ceiling.

“Don’t ask inconvenient questions, Father. What we’ve to do is to keep him here till he and I are — as we were.”

“How was that?”

“Married.”

“Ah… Well it is the rummest thing I ever heard of — marrying an old husband again, and so much new blood in the world! He’s no catch, to my thinking. I’d have had a new one while I was about it.”

“It isn’t rum for a woman to want her old husband back for respectability, though for a man to want his old wife back — well, perhaps it is funny, rather!” And Arabella was suddenly seized with a fit of loud laughter, in which her father joined more moderately.

“Be civil to him, and I’ll do the rest,” she said when she had recovered seriousness. “He told me this morning that his head ached fit to burst, and he hardly seemed to know where he was. And no wonder, considering how he mixed his drink last night. We must keep him jolly and cheerful here for a day or two, and not let him go back to his lodging. Whatever you advance I’ll pay back to you again. But I must go up and see how he is now, poor deary.”

Arabella ascended the stairs, softly opened the door of the first bedroom, and peeped in. Finding that her shorn Samson was asleep she entered to the bedside and stood regarding him. The fevered flush on his face from the debauch of the previous evening lessened the fragility of his ordinary appearance, and his long lashes, dark brows, and curly back hair and beard against the white pillow completed the physiognomy of one whom Arabella, as a woman of rank passions, still felt it worth while to recapture, highly important to recapture as a woman straitened both in means and in reputation. Her ardent gaze seemed to affect him; his quick breathing became suspended, and he opened his eyes.

“How are you now, dear?” said she. “It is I — Arabella.”

“Ah! — where — oh yes, I remember! You gave me shelter… I am stranded — ill — demoralised — damn bad! That’s what I am!”

“Then do stay here. There’s nobody in the house but father and me, and you can rest till you are thoroughly well. I’ll tell them at the stoneworks that you are knocked up.”

“I wonder what they are thinking at the lodgings!”

“I’ll go round and explain. Perhaps you had better let me pay up, or they’ll think we’ve run away?”

“Yes. You’ll find enough money in my pocket there.”

Quite indifferent, and shutting his eyes because he could not bear the daylight in his throbbing eye-balls, Jude seemed to doze again. Arabella took his purse, softly left the room, and putting on her outdoor things went off to the lodgings she and he had quitted the evening before.

Scarcely half an hour had elapsed ere she reappeared round the corner, walking beside a lad wheeling a truck on which were piled all Jude’s household possessions, and also the few of Arabella’s things which she had taken to the lodging for her short sojourn there. Jude was in such physical pain from his unfortunate break-down of the previous night, and in such mental pain from the loss of Sue and from having yielded in his half-somnolent state to Arabella, that when he saw his few chattels unpacked and standing before his eyes in this strange bedroom, intermixed with woman’s apparel, he scarcely considered how they had come there, or what their coming signalised.

“Now,” said Arabella to her father downstairs, “we must keep plenty of good liquor going in the house these next few days. I know his nature, and if he once gets into that fearfully low state that he does get into sometimes, he’ll never do the honourable thing by me in this world, and I shall be left in the lurch. He must be kept cheerful. He has a little money in the savings bank, and he has given me his purse to pay for anything necessary. Well, that will be the licence; for I must have that ready at hand, to catch him the moment he’s in the humour. You must pay for the liquor. A few friends, and a quiet convivial party would be the thing, if we could get it up. It would advertise the shop, and help me too.”

“That can be got up easy enough by anybody who’ll afford victuals and drink… Well yes — it would advertise the shop — that’s true.”

Three days later, when Jude had recovered somewhat from the fearful throbbing of his eyes and brain, but was still considerably confused in his mind by what had been supplied to him by Arabella during the interval — to keep him, jolly, as she expressed it — the quiet convivial gathering, suggested by her, to wind Jude up to the striking point, took place.

Donn had only just opened his miserable little pork and sausage shop, which had as yet scarce any customers; nevertheless that party advertised it well, and the Donns acquired a real notoriety among a certain class in Christminster who knew not the colleges, nor their works, nor their ways. Jude was asked if he could suggest any guest in addition to those named by Arabella and her father, and in a saturnine humour of perfect recklessness mentioned Uncle Joe, and Stagg, and the decayed auctioneer, and others whom he remembered as having been frequenters of the well-known tavern during his bout therein years before. He also suggested Freckles and Bower o’ Bliss. Arabella took him at his word so far as the men went, but drew the line at the ladies.

Another man they knew, Tinker Taylor, though he lived in the same street, was not invited; but as he went homeward from a late job on the evening of the party, he had occasion to call at the shop for trotters. There were none in, but he was promised some the next morning. While making his inquiry Taylor glanced into the back room, and saw the guests sitting round, card-playing, and drinking, and otherwise enjoying themselves at Donn’s expense. He went home to bed, and on his way out next morning wondered how the party went off. He thought it hardly worth while to call at the shop for his provisions at that hour, Donn and his daughter being probably not up, if they caroused late the night before. However, he found in passing that the door was open, and he could hear voices within, though the shutters of the meat-stall were not down. He went and tapped at the sitting-room door, and opened it.

“Well — to be sure!” he said, astonished.

Hosts and guests were sitting card-playing, smoking, and talking, precisely as he had left them eleven hours earlier; the gas was burning and the curtains drawn, though it had been broad daylight for two hours out of doors.

“Yes!” cried Arabella, laughing. “Here we are, just the same. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves, oughtn’t we! But it is a sort of housewarming, you see; and our friends are in no hurry. Come in, Mr. Taylor, and sit down.”

The tinker, or rather reduced ironmonger, was nothing loath, and entered and took a seat. “I shall lose a quarter, but never mind,” he said. “Well, really, I could hardly believe my eyes when I looked in! It seemed as if I was flung back again into last night, all of a sudden.”

“So you are. Pour out for Mr. Taylor.”

He now perceived that she was sitting beside Jude, her arm being round his waist. Jude, like the rest of the company, bore on his face the signs of how deeply he had been indulging.

“Well, we’ve been waiting for certain legal hours to arrive, to tell the truth,” she continued bashfully, and making her spirituous crimson look as much like a maiden blush as possible. “Jude and I have decided to make up matters between us by tying the knot again, as we find we can’t do without one another after all. So, as a bright notion, we agreed to sit on till it was late enough, and go and do it off-hand.”

Jude seemed to pay no great heed to what she was announcing, or indeed to anything whatever. The entrance of Taylor infused fresh spirit into the company, and they remained sitting, till Arabella whispered to her father: “Now we may as well go.”

“But the parson don’t know?”

“Yes, I told him last night that we might come between eight and nine, as there were reasons of decency for doing it as early and quiet as possible; on account of it being our second marriage, which might make people curious to look on if they knew. He highly approved.”

“Oh very well: I’m ready,” said her father, getting up and shaking himself.

“Now, old darling,” she said to Jude. “Come along, as you promised.”

“When did I promise anything?” asked he, whom she had made so tipsy by her special knowledge of that line of business as almost to have made him sober again — or to seem so to those who did not know him.

“Why!” said Arabella, affecting dismay. “You’ve promised to marry me several times as we’ve sat here to-night. These gentlemen have heard you.”

“I don’t remember it,” said Jude doggedly. “There’s only one woman — but I won’t mention her in this Capharnaum!”

Arabella looked towards her father. “Now, Mr. Fawley be honourable,” said Donn. “You and my daughter have been living here together these three or four days, quite on the understanding that you were going to marry her. Of course I shouldn’t have had such goings on in my house if I hadn’t understood that. As a point of honour you must do it now.”

“Don’t say anything against my honour!” enjoined Jude hotly, standing up. “I’d marry the W–––– of Babylon rather than do anything dishonourable! No reflection on you, my dear. It is a mere rhetorical figure — what they call in the books, hyperbole.”